Wikipedia

Deezer

Deezer is a French music streaming service founded in 2007 that provides users with access to a vast library of music tracks, podcasts, and radio stations. The company has been a subsidiary of Access Industries since 2016. It offers streaming services in over 180 countries and features a catalog of more than 90 million licensed tracks, making it one of the largest streaming platforms available. Deezer is available on various devices, including Android, iOS, macOS and others.

Deezer
Type of businessSubsidiary
Available in180+ countries and territories[1]
Founded22 August 2007; 17 years ago (2007-08-22)[2]
Paris, France
Headquarters
Paris
,
France[3]
Founder(s)Daniel Marhely
Jonathan Benassaya
Key peopleJeronimo Folgueira (CEO)
Aurélien Hérault (CIO)
Matthieu Gorvan (CTO)
IndustryMusic, podcast, and video
ServicesMusic streaming
Revenue€451 million in 2022 ($484 million)[4]
€400 million (2021)
ParentAccess Industries[5]
(2016–present)
URLdeezer.com
CommercialYes
RegistrationRequired
Current statusActive
Native client(s) onWeb, Android, iOS, Windows, Windows Mobile, BlackBerry OS, macOS, WatchOS, Wear OS, Android TV, Xbox, Chromecast, CarPlay, Android Auto, IMessage

History

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Deezer was founded in Paris, France, in August 2007 by Daniel Marhely and Jonathan Benassaya. Initially, it started as a independent project called Blogmusik, which allowed users to stream music directly from the web.[6][7] After facing legal challenges concerning music copyrights, the platform rebranded as Deezer and secured licensing agreements with major record labels, allowing it to operate as a legal streaming service.[8]

The site was relaunched as Deezer in August 2007 after reaching an agreement with SACEM, a French organization that manages music copyrights.[9] Under this agreement, Deezer committed to compensating copyright holders through revenue generated from advertisements on the platform. Additionally, Deezer allowed users to download songs streamed on the platform through iTunes, earning a commission for each purchase made.[8]

Launch

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First logo of Deezer from 2007 to 2019

At its launch in 2007, Deezer had not yet secured agreements with major music labels, resulting in a limited catalog. It took over two years for the platform to finalize deals with the four largest record labels, as well as several smaller ones. In its first month of operation, Deezer's website attracted approximately 773,000 visitors, and its popularity grew rapidly over the following years. By May 2008, the service had 2.75 million monthly users, which increased to seven million by December 2009. By 2011, Deezer had obtained the rights to approximately eight million songs.[8]

Despite the high traffic, Deezer almost immediately ran into financial problems. During the first half of 2008, the company saw revenue of just 875,000 euros, which was not enough to pay its licensing fees.[8] In July 2008, the company began running ads itself through advertising agency Deezer Media. In October 2008, Deezer secured $8.4 million in funding from AGF Private Equity and CM-CIC Capital Prive, bringing total investment in the company to $15.8 million.[10] The company introduced mandatory registration in February 2009 to gather more precise data on users, to run more targeted ads, and in November 2009 began running audio ads between songs.[8]

On 5 November 2009, Deezer launched a new three-tier service model. While continuing basic free web streaming, the company also introduced two subscription services: users paying €4.99 monthly received higher audio quality music without ads, and users paying €9.99 monthly gained access to downloadable applications for computers, as well as Android, BlackBerry and iOS mobile devices.[11]

In January 2010, the company's CEO and co-founder, Jonathan Benassaya, was replaced as CEO by Axel Dauchez, after fewer than 15,000 of Deezer's 12 million users signed up for its subscription services.[12] In August 2010, mobile operator Orange partnered with Deezer in a deal to include free access to Deezer Premium, the highest tier of Deezer's streaming packages, with some of Orange's telecommunications contracts in France.[13] Almost immediately after the partnership began, the rate of users signing up for Deezer's premium services went from 6,000 a month to 100,000. By January 2011, 500,000 people were subscribing to the service, and the millionth subscriber mark joined in the middle of 2011, which was half a year ahead of Deezer's expectation.[8] The two companies expanded their partnership in September 2011 to include Orange contract customers in the UK.[14] Also in September, Deezer added Facebook integration to its service, allowing users to send music to one another via that social media service.[15]

International expansion

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Deezer was launched in France in 2007, where it was the market leader as of 2017.[16] On 7 December 2011, Deezer, at the time available only in Belgium, France and the United Kingdom, announced plans to expand worldwide during the rest of 2011 and continuing into 2012.[17] According to the company, it planned to make its services available to all of Europe by the end of the year, to the Americas (excluding the United States) by the end of January 2012, to Africa and Southeast Asia by the end of February, and the rest of the world (excluding Japan) by the end of June.[17]

Service was not available across the whole of Europe until 15 March 2012,[18] and service launched in Australia, Canada, and New Zealand on 25 April.[19] On 8 June, Deezer announced availability in 35 Latin American countries, though not in Brazil, Cuba, or Venezuela.[20] On 15 August, Deezer announced it would be available in Indonesia, Malaysia, Pakistan, the Philippines, Singapore, and Thailand within several weeks.[21]

On 8 October 2012, Deezer announced that it had received $130 million in funding from Access Industries, to be used for further international expansion.[10] Two days later, the company announced that it had expanded into 76 new markets, bringing its worldwide total to 160 countries.[22] On 21 December, Deezer announced a new service level offering two hours of free, ad-supported music streaming a month, available to users worldwide, the company's first free music streaming service outside France.[23] CEO Dauchez said that Deezer was also looking for a partner to introduce service in the United States, who was "able to provide us with a significant volume of subscribers" to help offset what he called the "unbelievably high" costs of entering the US market.[23]

As of December 2012, Deezer had about two million users paying for subscriptions, out of a monthly active user base of about seven million, with 20 million songs in its library.[24] By 2016, according to CEO Dauchez, the company aimed to have five percent of the global music market.[24]

In January 2013, Deezer announced its expansion into 22 new countries across Africa, Asia, Brazil, the Middle East, and the United States, bringing its total to 182.[25][26] However, the US launch has been restricted to a limited number of device promotions.[27] In July 2016, Deezer added the U.S. to the supported country list.[28] As of March 2022, Deezer listed on its website 185 regions where the service was available.[29]

After expansion

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Countries where Deezer is available (as of March 2022)

Following this expansion, in 2013 Deezer announced partnerships with LG Electronics, Samsung Electronics and Toshiba, which meant Deezer apps were available on smart TV platforms,[30] along with a new brand identity developed in association with the illustrator mcbess.[31]

Since then, Deezer has made a number of announcements, including its Developer Reward Scheme, mobile App Studio and API upgrades,[32] a new, exclusive beta version of its mobile app for Android users,[33] and the new Deezer app for Windows 8.[34]

April 2013 also saw Deezer update its iOS app with a new smart caching feature, allowing the app to identify and remember a user's most played tracks, even in areas of poor network coverage.[35]

In June 2014, Deezer announced a new partnership with Samsung giving Samsung Galaxy S5 users in Europe a free, six months Deezer Premium+ subscription. Samsung and Deezer extended their partnership by offering a six-month, free of charge subscription to Deezer Premium+ for Samsung's Multiroom Wireless Audio Products, including its M5 and M7 line of Multiroom wireless audio speakers.[36] Samsung UK and Deezer offered this promotion again from 2016-2018.[37][38]

In June 2014, Deezer and Google announced that the Google Chromecast would be supporting Deezer's Android and iPhone apps to allow users to stream music from their phone to their televisions through the Chromecast. Chromecast support became available to Deezer Premium+ users from 25 June 2014 onwards in Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Finland, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom. [citation needed]

In September 2014, Deezer announced Deezer Elite, a new exclusive service made for and in partnership with Sonos. Deezer Elite provides CD-quality audio to U.S. users of Sonos Hi-Fi Systems. The service is available worldwide to Sonos users of Deezer only.[39] Deezer Elite "High-Resolution Audio" is lossless CD quality (16bit/44.1 kHz) and not "Hi-Res" or high-resolution audio. Sonos does not support Hi-Res (24/96, 24/192 or similar) streaming.

In the US, Deezer HiFi offers 36 million tracks of 16-Bit/44.1 kHz of FLAC quality music for a $19.95 monthly subscription. It is "Only available on selected soundsystems and the Desktop App," and offers downloads to phones at 320 kbit/s.[40]

In October 2014, Deezer announced that Bose SoundTouch and SoundLink products would now be supported for Deezer Premium+ service. This partnership will first be rolled out in the United States and then will be available to worldwide users.[41]

In October 2014, Deezer announced that Stitcher Radio would be merging into Deezer. By 2015, Deezer users would be able to use Stitcher Radio features within Deezer.[42]

In December 2014, Deezer and Pepsi announced a partnership to set up the Midem Artist Accelerator to support managers and labels as they grow the profiles of their artists.[43][44] In June 2016, it sold Stitcher to E.W. Scripps Company for $4.5 million[45]

 
Second logo from 2019 to 2023

On 7 November 2019, Deezer released Spleeter, an open-source "audio source separation" utility written in Python that uses the TensorFlow machine learning library and pretrained models for audio stem extraction.[46]

In September 2020, Deezer joined a number of tech companies in the Coalition for App Fairness led by Epic Games to demand better conditions for the inclusion of their apps in the app stores of Apple and Google.[47]

In the first quarter of 2021, Deezer held a 2% market share of the music streaming service market. In July 2021, Deezer announced that free account users could use Google Assistant speakers to stream music.[48][49]

On 5 July 2022, Deezer became a publicly traded company.[50]

In June 2023, Deezer announced the launch of an AI-based tool designed to identify and label songs utilizing artificially generated vocal duplicates. This initiative is geared towards protecting the earnings of legitimate artists.[51]

In September 2023, it was announced that Deezer and Universal Music Group had struck a deal to change the way royalty payments were split between artists. As part of the new model, streams of songs from professional artists — defined as those who generate at least 1,000 listens a month — will be given double the weight of streams from non-professionals when calculating royalty payments.[52]

In November 2023, Deezer announced a new brand identity, changing the app's logo to a stylized purple heart, and rebranding as an "experience services platform".[53][better source needed]

Subscription tiers

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Subscription Ads Skipping and scrubbing Offline mode TV, HiFi, and car Support Google Chromecast support Accounts Highest quality
Deezer Free Ad-supported Unlimited skips and scrubbing (desktop)

Six skips per hour, no scrubbing (mobile)

Unavailable Available (restricted) Available (restricted) 1 MP3 quality (128 kbit/s)
Deezer Student None Unlimited skips and scrubbing Available Available Available 1 CD Quality (16-Bit/44.1 kHz FLAC)
Deezer Premium None Unlimited skips and scrubbing Available Available Available 1 CD Quality (16-Bit/44.1 kHz FLAC)
Deezer Family None Unlimited skips and scrubbing Available Available Available 6 CD Quality (16-Bit/44.1 kHz FLAC)

See also

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References

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  1. ^ "Deezer press page show company stats". Retrieved 6 December 2015.
  2. ^ "What is Deezer?". Retrieved 12 June 2023.
  3. ^ "Deezer Revenues Up 13% on Partnership Growth, Lower Marketing Costs in 2022". Billboard. Retrieved 12 June 2023.
  4. ^ "Warner Music's Parent Company Now In Control of Deezer Following French Approval". Billboard. 9 August 2016. Archived from the original on 12 May 2018. Retrieved 12 February 2018.
  5. ^ Arrington, Michael (9 September 2006). "Check out Blogmusik Before It's Pulled off the Internet". TechCrunch. Retrieved 8 November 2023.
  6. ^ "Exclusive: BlogMusik To Go Legit; Launches Free & Legal Music On Demand". TechCrunch. 22 August 2007. Retrieved 8 November 2023.
  7. ^ a b c d e f "Deezer: Profitability Down the Line?". INA Global. 19 August 2011. Archived from the original on 3 April 2015. Retrieved 21 December 2012.
  8. ^ "Exclusive: BlogMusik To Go Legit; Launches Free & Legal Music On Demand". TechCrunch.com. 21 August 2007. Archived from the original on 9 January 2013. Retrieved 21 December 2012.
  9. ^ a b "Deezer's Expansion Plans Get a Boost". The Wall Street Journal. 8 October 2012. Retrieved 21 December 2012.
  10. ^ "Digital music startup Deezer debuts desktop client, premium offering". TechCrunch.com. 5 November 2009. Archived from the original on 26 January 2013. Retrieved 21 December 2012.
  11. ^ "Post bloodletting, Deezer appoints a new CEO". TechCrunch.com. 28 January 2010. Archived from the original on 2 July 2013. Retrieved 21 December 2012.
  12. ^ "Orange brings Deezer Premium to its customers". Screen Digest. 6 August 2010. Archived from the original on 25 May 2013. Retrieved 21 December 2012.
  13. ^ "Deezer takes on Spotify with Orange deal". Financial Times. 7 September 2011. Archived from the original on 1 November 2012. Retrieved 21 December 2012.
  14. ^ "Deezer enters realm of Facebook". Telecompaper. 23 September 2011. Archived from the original on 24 September 2015. Retrieved 21 December 2012.
  15. ^ Sophie Sassard (20 September 2017). "Deezer: The French music streaming service taking on Spotify, Apple and Amazon". The Independent. Retrieved 27 December 2018. The unlisted company, which launched a decade ago, is the market leader in its home market of France
  16. ^ a b "Deezer plans to launch music service in 200 countries by June 2012 (but not in the US and Japan)". TechCrunch.com. 7 December 2011. Retrieved 21 December 2012.
  17. ^ "Deezer now covers all European countries from Iceland to Russia (46 countries)". The Next Web. 15 March 2012. Retrieved 21 December 2012.
  18. ^ "Spotify rival Deezer continues its worldwide expansion with the launch in Canada, Australia, and New Zealand". The Next Web. 25 April 2012. Retrieved 21 December 2012.
  19. ^ "Music streaming service Deezer goes live in 35 Latin American territories today". The Next Web. 7 June 2012. Retrieved 21 December 2012.
  20. ^ "European Music Streaming Service Deezer Heads to Asia; Partners With Telco dTac In Thailand". TechCrunch.com. 15 August 2012. Retrieved 21 December 2012.
  21. ^ "Deezer's streaming music service now available in 160 countries, US market 'not ready'". The Verge. 10 October 2012. Retrieved 21 December 2012.
  22. ^ a b "Spotify Rival Deezer Eyes U.S". The Wall Street Journal. 21 December 2012. Retrieved 21 December 2012.
  23. ^ a b "Deezer's CEO Axel Dauchez On Cracking Into The U.S. And Why It's Not Just Another Spotify". TechCrunch.com. 9 October 2012. Retrieved 21 December 2012.
  24. ^ "Deezer Takes On Spotify With Expansions In Middle East, Africa, Brazil And Asia". TechCrunch.com. 28 January 2013.
  25. ^ "Deezer compte se lancer aux Etats-Unis en 2014". Challenges.fr (in French). 20 November 2013.
  26. ^ "Deezer, entering US". CNET. Retrieved 23 January 2016.
  27. ^ "Deezer Music Preview for Windows 10 PC and Mobile is now available for U.S. users". windowscentral.com. 2 July 2016. Retrieved 3 July 2016.
  28. ^ "Deezer for developers". developers.deezer.com. Retrieved 18 March 2022.
  29. ^ "Deezer is bringing its streaming music service to smart TVs, via deals with Samsung, LG and Toshiba". The Next Web. 6 February 2013. Retrieved 26 February 2013.
  30. ^ "McBess draws for Deezer". designweek.co.uk. Retrieved 26 February 2013.
  31. ^ "Music streaming service Deezer adds third-party app discovery to smartphones, updates its API". The Next Web. 13 March 2013. Retrieved 13 March 2013.
  32. ^ "Deezer for Android gets a redesign, predictive search function in new beta version". Engadget. Retrieved 3 April 2013.
  33. ^ "Deezer launches Windows 8 app for its on-demand music streaming service ahead of Spotify and Rdio". The Next Web. 17 April 2013. Retrieved 17 April 2013.
  34. ^ "Deezer adds 'smart caching' to its iOS app". MusicAlly.com. 26 April 2013. Retrieved 26 April 2013.
  35. ^ "Six months of music free from Samsung and Deezer". HEXUS.net. 4 June 2014. Retrieved 21 August 2019.
  36. ^ "Up to 2 years of music when you buy two or more selected Multiroom products". Samsung.com. Retrieved 21 August 2019.
  37. ^ "How to claim your complimentary Deezer Premium+". currys.co.uk. Archived from the original on 24 September 2020. Retrieved 21 August 2019.
  38. ^ "Exceptional audio quality with Deezer Elite and Sonos". deezer.com. 10 September 2014. Archived from the original on 13 September 2014. Retrieved 24 October 2014.
  39. ^ "Deezer HiFi". deezer.com.
  40. ^ "U.S. music fans can now enjoy Deezer Premium+ on Bose products". deezer.com. 2 October 2014. Archived from the original on 5 October 2014. Retrieved 24 October 2014.
  41. ^ "Stitcher joins Deezer!". stitcher.com. Archived from the original on 10 August 2017. Retrieved 24 October 2014.
  42. ^ Green, Tim (9 January 2015). "Deezer: bring on the competition, there are 3.47bn more streaming music consumers to go round". Hot Topics. Archived from the original on 18 January 2015. Retrieved 14 January 2015.
  43. ^ "Midem, Pepsi, and Deezer team up for 'artist accelerator'". musically.com. 20 December 2014. Retrieved 14 January 2015.
  44. ^ Roettgers, Janko (6 June 2016). "Scripps Buys Podcast Service Stitcher from Deezer". Variety.
  45. ^ Moussallam, Manuel (4 November 2019). "Releasing Spleeter: Deezer R&D source separation engine". Deezer.io. Retrieved 7 November 2019.
  46. ^ "App makers band together to fight for App Store changes with new 'Coalition for App Fairness'". TechCrunch.com. 24 September 2020. Archived from the original on 22 March 2021. Retrieved 25 September 2020.
  47. ^ "Spotify Is Slowly Losing Market Share to Rivals Including Tencent, Amazon". Digital Music News. 14 July 2021. Retrieved 4 August 2021.
  48. ^ "Deezer free users can now stream through Google Home/Nest speak". pocket-lint.com. 13 July 2021. Retrieved 4 August 2021.
  49. ^ Peoples, Glenn (5 July 2022). "Deezer Shares Fall 29% on First Day of Public Trading". Billboard. Retrieved 5 July 2022.
  50. ^ AFP (6 June 2023). "Deezer to detect AI-generated music clones". Digital Journal. Retrieved 6 June 2023.
  51. ^ Nicolaou, Anna (6 September 2023). "Universal Music strikes deal to reshape streaming economics". Financial Times. Retrieved 6 September 2023.
  52. ^ Klusen, Karina (7 November 2023). "Deezer reveals bold new brand identity and logo – setting the stage for an era of music experiences". Deezer Newsroom. Retrieved 8 November 2023.
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